Like old Georgie (Lucas*) would say, (an atmosphere of) fear leads to threat perception, which leads to anger..

So the desire for political shifts drains the nation's attention away from (locally) consequential actions. There's plenty of stuff that approximates direct democracy at the town level but the tough (=hard to keep in _both_ prefrontal & basal) part is trickling it upwards

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/direct-democracy-seri...

Sorry for the meta: pols45/joules77 is your type, only richer

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45787446

*Zen Buddhism+Methodism != Stoicism but come quite close